


An Unlikely Haunting

by chantefable



Series: Beltane Collection [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry, Curse Breaking, Gen, Haunting, Humor, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), Pranks and Practical Jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-03-22 16:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3736507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/pseuds/chantefable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Auror Potter finds his house unpleasantly haunted on the eve of Beltane. This requires expert assistance.</p><p>ADW: 54/34</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Unlikely Haunting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vix_spes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vix_spes/gifts).



**Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place**

Auror Potter took the stairs on his way to the ground floor of his house, and that was his downfall.

Surely this was not how the day was supposed to begin. Misfortune usually beset him on the way to the Ministry at the earliest, having the grim decency to await him sprawled all over his writing desk in the form of a dozen unfortunate reports, or ambush him when he was out in the field, scraping magical traces off the scene of an incident. Usually that was the moment when the misfortune whispered in his ear, its hot breath raising goosebumps on his neck before he turned and walked straight into whatever disgusting, dangerous thing was clawing its way into Auror Potter's workday. That was not in any way agreeable, of course, but it was predictable and understandable, and if a particularly bored and daring Dark Wizard hadn't been trying to spike his takeaway coffee with toxic dragon dung every now and then, Auror Potter would have dreaded growing complacent.

Still, the house at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, had long stopped tripping him and dropping picture frames on his head. Indeed, ever since his last wife and child moved out, it was a soothingly deaf and dumb place. Not a stir out of order, not a sound penetrating from the outside. Auror Potter most certainly would have sensed as much as wisp of strange magic within the house. Who would have dared braving his wards for the sake of delivering a few moments of unpleasantness when the same thing could have been achieved just as well, and more efficiently, in Diagon Alley, or at the Ministry, where safety standards were as lax as they were numerous?

The situation was beyond his understanding. And yet Auror Potter's feet remained stubbornly glued to the stairs as the entire staircase slid subtly downwards, the bottom steps swallowed by the scraped hardwood floors with quiet but disturbing slurps. He reached for his wand –

_'Dammit!'_

His wand had somehow displaced itself, no longer a comfortable weight against his thigh. Instead, it was somehow lying on the floor a few feet away from the door, giving him no more than a cheeky gleam in response to his attempts at wandless Summoning.

Auror Potter was not normally one to try wandless Disapparation, leaving such displays to those who were more skilled or less sober. However, as the floor closed on one of the fractured, creaky steps with a hungry crunch, he decided that Splinching could be considered a valid risk in this situation.

Of course, he needn't have bothered with concerned reflection and weighing all the pros and cons, since the Disapparation attempt accomplished exactly nothing.

Sliding past a tiny portrait of Cedrella Black and Septimus Weasley, Auror Potter inquired what their opinion on these unfortunate events might be. However, his vehemence translated into so much rudeness that the couple decided to ignore him. They glided out of the frame, painted expressions of disapproval flashing in Auror Potter's side vision.

Next, Walburga Black peeked out of a green landscape scattered with sheep (an old acquisition of Daphne's), vague curiosity distorting her saturnine features. She then dashed out, darting from frame to frame with an energy that probably stemmed from macabre delight. 

Auror Potter usually prided himself on his quick thinking, and yet this predicament appeared to have overcome everything his wits were capable of. He would have used magic, but it didn't work. He would have taken off his shoes and jumped off the offending staircase that seemed to relish its own annihilation, but his laces wouldn't budge. He would have taken off his clothes to tie himself to some ornament attached to the wall and at least tested the probability of hanging there without his feet being torn off, but his clothes, too, apparently were considered a part of _him_ , and all of Auror Potter was heading towards the wooden jaws opening in the floor, no exceptions.

So it was most peculiar when the staircase froze, the last step sloppily sunk halfway into the floor, and Auror Potter tore himself off the next step, tumbling headfirst to the floor. As he lay on the gritty wood, with a sprained ankle and a growing bump on his head, splayed like an afterthought offering to some malicious deity of household chores, Auror Potter cursed up a storm and wondered what was suddenly haunting his house.

*

Since the incident most certainly granted him the right to take a day off work, Auror Potter did what any man with enough common sense and life experience would do in his place when faced with an unmentionable challenge: he called his wife. Fortunately for Auror Potter, his resources were plentiful in this department, for he had three; and though they were all technically former wives, he was reasonably convinced they intended to keep him alive on principle. Thankfully, the technological advances in Floo powder and fireplace grates allowed him to pour out his woes and solicit the help of Daphne Greengrass, Padma Patil, and Ginevra Weasley in no time.

Padma came first, and brought along Albus, who was quite mesmerized by the idea of a cursed staircase. He gave it the kind of wide-eyed, enamoured stare that was usually reserved for sugary confections packed with fat, and the slumbering softness of his mouth suggested a fascination that Auror Potter was not too keen to examine at the moment. 

Auror Potter felt viciously better about the whole incident when Padma, a Curse-Breaker of international acclaim, failed to identify the reason for the staircase's movement or the source of the floor's voracious appetite. And though his bruised ego was doing slightly better now, his conscious mind certainly wasn't, so he dragged Albus to the kitchen and made him revoltingly syrupy pancakes as Padma stomped up and down the stairs, demanding they relinquish their secrets. Neither this advanced approach nor any other worked, and Auror Potter's questions remained unanswered by the time Padma left and Ginevra Weasley arrived. 

Lily was not in attendance to enjoy the pancakes that had survived Albus' assault, but Ginny thankfully polished them off before returning to the hall to opine on the staircase and the décor in general. Neither Ginny nor Padma had ever been inclined to like the house, which Harry had mostly restored to its gloomy splendour, winding corridors and heavily stuffy tapestry rooms intact. 

Out of visceral nostalgia for things he never lived, he preserved the rooms and attributes ill-suited to comfort, because they were relics of a magical past, a family history which eluded him. All these years, in his hungry pursuit of _home_ , he strived to fill the house with as many objects as possible, for those were clear markers of domesticity in his eyes. Consequently, the two distinct looks of the house now awkwardly meshed together: on the one hand, the space was saturated with old books, old furniture, old pictures that could be traced generations into the past and with details and ornaments that would have been considered beautiful and appropriate a hundred years ago; on the other, there were plenty of modern Muggle contraptions that valiantly struggled to work in the face of haywire interference from magical fields. The pantry was a cemetery of dead toasters; the playroom was filled to the brim with whatever toys were considered fashionable when Harry had gone shopping for James, Albus, or Lily; the sitting-room reluctantly extended its hospitality to a huge TV-set which did not even work, but it was comforting for Harry to own one just the same. 

Still, even when one grew more or less accustomed to the _style_ , the hall was indeed particularly garish. The large wall was heavy with dignified frames covering it within an inch, like an abundant apple harvest. The old floor was not quite renovated because Harry did not have the heart to throw away and replace any of the floorboards that might remember Sirius' feet, or his parents' feet. The coats were spilling from the racks in the corner, piled haphazardly with an assortment of shoes. 

Harry could not, with good conscience, claim to be a tidy person.

But Ginny's scoffing and scolding was casual, and did not bite as hard as it used to, when every reproach would leave deep, dragged-out marks right where Harry felt tender and inadequate. She was simply a bit vexed to be called down here on the eve of Beltane, when she and Fleur were planning a trip to one of the wells in Somerset. Not that she or Fleur needed any magic dew to maintain youthfulness; if anything, their features remained smoothly rounded and unchanged all these years, as was the case with those of pure wizarding blood, when Harry himself found grey at his temples and saw his skin get rougher as fast as his middle grew soft. He and Hermione looked their age (indeed, Hermione looked far better than he did: she took more care with her appearance and had been generally invigorated by her divorce) while Ginny, Daphne, and Padma were as fresh-faced as they had been at twenty.

After casting a few domestic charms and dodging an unexpectedly detached piece of railing eager to make contact with her head, Ginny consented that the staircase was probably not cursed, but was most likely enchanted or haunted by a peculiar kind of darker energy. She then gave an insouciant shrug and declared that Harry was probably safe as long as he Apparated directly between the ground floor and the first floor, and that old family magic suddenly regurgitated by the house was not really something that merited more concern than a Ghoul in the attic. With that, she patted Harry on the back and stepped out the front door, vanishing with a pop. 

The whole conversation greatly improved Harry's spirits, and as he went to the kitchen to do the dishes, he already anticipated presenting himself at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement for the remaining couple hours of working time; however, while fixing himself a cuppa he heard a mighty crashing noise reverberating all across the house, and paddled to the hall very much like a disturbed duck, tea sloshing all over the place. And so it was in a cloud of fine grey dust, amidst the rubble and the slivers that Daphne found him when she opened the door with her key.

The staircase' middle section was gone entirely, the void gaping like a mouth, a few planks sticking out like broken teeth. It looked vaguely menacing and peckish, daring any bystander to peek into the dark hole that emanated unexpected warmth.

After greeting the assorted deceased Black family members that had gathered in the frames, sometimes three or four in a single painting and positively gleeful with curiosity, Daphne gracefully floated up, up, halfway to the first floor and lingered above the rapidly warming void, frowning at the fumes that had begun to rise from somewhere inside. The house may or may not have been on fire; the evidence was inconclusive. 

Daphne and Harry tossed suggestions back and forth, guessing as to the nature of the house's impromptu disintegration. It might have been a fire. It could have been a magical fire, somewhere deep in the cellars, should, say, Elladora Black have kept a bottle of self-inflammatory Goblin brandy somewhere in the stash that Harry never got around to examining. But for some reason doubt stirred heavily in Harry's chest, recoiling from that logical explanation. His gut said that this was the wrong conclusion.

And then the stairs paled to a sickly yellow and started jumping up to touch Daphne's heels, and a cracking noise rose from below the planks, barely muted, she flipped and flopped higher and higher until, to the triumphant cheering of a painted Narcissa Malfoy who had somehow appeared in a blue-hued portrait of Orion Black, Daphne successfully caught the edge of a chandelier and held on, dangling her feet above the rampage.

With that, a horrible moodiness overtook Harry, because if this had nothing to do with Daphne's interior decorating right after their honeymoon, and the portraits wouldn't offer anything of substance at this topic, he had to assume the dreariest of developments. The house had finally turned on him. It had tolerated him while there had been proper wizarding gentlefolk around, his wives and kids, but with them out, it had apparently decided enough is enough. The reddish fumes ceased for now, but the entire scene was as much of an open wound as cracked wood and disfigured accoutrements could manage, and it sent a message, loud and clear.

Harry's prolonged comfortable stay was very much not the priority here.

***

**Ninety-Nine, Knockturn Alley**

A tapping sound came from the door, not unlike that of an owl trying to get through a window glass, but any owl was smarter than that and would not try Severus' door. Anyone else dim enough to come knocking and expecting to be let in Ninety-Nine, Knockturn Alley, deserved just what they got, which was absolutely nothing.

Severus took another sip of his milky tea and rustled the pages of the Daily Prophet.

Spring sunlight carefully sluiced in through the high windows, filling the room with a kind of trembling brightness that awkwardly illuminated the yellowish streaks on the ceiling and the fluffy dust that hogged the corners of Severus' sparsely furnished sitting-room like a flock of huddling Pygmy Puffs from beyond the grave.

A few more taps, louder this time, more insistent, but Severus disguised them from his mind by clanking his teacup against the chipped saucer just so, and hummed to himself as he began reading a fascinating article about Gnarlug, the goblin magnate who made millions of Galleons on the Muggle credit crunch.

The knocking continued, like a particularly annoying alarm call of the clock when all one wanted to do was to stay in bed, cocooned in warmth and isolation. Severus studiously tried to ignore it, but the knocking persisted: it kept resuming at short intervals, yanking him out of the pleasant tea-and-newspaper trance in fits and starts. It was most irritating. Even the springs in Severus' armchair coiled with tension, and the cold, ash-filled mouth of the fireplace seemed to twist in suspicion.

Severus stood, dismayed, and paced the length of his faded, but exceptionally fine and well-loved carpet. Moments like these he regretted his abject hatred of knick-knacks, which meant that the room provided exactly nothing he could satisfyingly hurl and smash against the wall. There was a half-full bottle of Ogden's finest that Draco had given him for Yule, but the annoyance did not seem on the scale of dramatically wasting good alcohol.

Acknowledging that the heavy, rhythmic banging currently rocking his front door meant that whoever it was, they were ready to be at it for quite some time, Severus walked towards the hall, the Summoned keys jangling above his head. He opened the locks one by one, peering through the small Foe-glass in the door and wondering whose bulk was crowding the narrow stairs of his tiny porch.

He opened the door, and there was Harry Potter.

Sickened, Severus wished he had thrown that bottle of Ogden's after all.

He felt as if he should have known that it would be Potter, as if the knocking itself was irksome and significant enough to warrant the worst kind of dread. No early omen had suggested Potter's appearance; there was no conceivable reason for him to be here, his sturdy, stocky frame inexorably filling Severus' narrow doorway with burgundy colour (the Auror robes) and Ministry authority (the Auror status), both of which Severus despised and avoided. He made a step back in understandable evasion even as the obvious question rose in his throat, but the short moment it struggled past the constriction of anger was enough for Potter to step over the threshold into Severus' home and say, 'Good morning, Mr Snape.'

That was it. The ordinary greeting delivered in a bleak, worn-thin tone of a government official made it out of Potter's mouth into the air and hung there, dull and incongruous, like a huge question mark.

'Do come in.' Severus' civil reply and inflection belonged to his mother, and sounded just as strange to his ears as the uninspired and impersonal _Good morning, Mr Snape_ that Potter had just landed like a blow to his head.

Severus closed the door as Potter shuffled into the hall, the floorboards creaking under his feet in disbelief. How utterly ridiculous. Turning around, Severus thought better of adding a redundant question about Auror duty or social visits that would make it easier for Potter to state his purpose. Contrary to some people's distorted memories, Severus was not abysmal at human interaction, he just chose not to engage. Ignoring the rules put the opponent at a temporary disadvantage.

Which was why Severus now had a moment to himself to observe Potter while the other man struggled to state the purpose of his visit with the usual cue missing. Potter's features were discoloured, but still unpleasantly familiar, the resemblance to James Potter washed out by the silver in his limp hair, the twenty pounds of weight his father hadn't had on him, a dusting of red capillaries risen to the surface of Potter's sallow skin and a certain puffiness in Potter's face that allowed Severus to compare him, in the vicious privacy of his own mind, to a bloated penguin. Potter looked hung-over, and this morning was obviously not an isolated incident.

'Mr Snape, I'm here on Auror business. We require your assistance in an... incident.' 

Severus thought that Potter's voice sounded kind of brittle. It had the kind of creak that came from smoking too many strong cigarettes, and suddenly and strangely reminded Severus of his own father.

'Apologies for the intrusion,' Potter added, probably an afterthought after he mentally went through The MLE Guidelines for Talking to People, or whatever those flying Ministry monkeys lived by.

Shaking off the clammy, dark thoughts of Tobias Snape, Severus silently went back to the sitting-room, not bothering with a verbal invitation to follow since Potter immediately trotted along with the grace of a Bugbear, just like Severus knew he would.

The sitting-room, spacious and Spartan and above such trivialities as the pursuit of cleanliness, weathered Potter's intrusion well. It was by no means welcoming: the only armchair was currently occupied by the Daily Prophet, which had spread its pages across the seat and armrests in proprietary glee, and Potter had no way of sitting down. Severus pointedly did not offer him tea. As it was, Potter simply stood in the middle of the room, bloodshot eyes staring at nothing in particular, even though Severus was sure Potter somehow had everything catalogued in his mind, down to the wards strung through the windows.

Severus' gaze hovered above the rounded line of Potter's midsection. The Auror's robe was hanging loose and unbuttoned, and the rumpled pinstriped shirt gaping through looked like it was slept in at least once, and definitely sweated in. Severus resolutely did not look any lower, lest he catch the sight of something like trousers with breakfast stains on them, or worse, jeans. 

Letting the silence stretch, Severus leaned against the bare wall next to the cabinet and thought about the bottle of Ogden's. It was now too late to throw it and still too early to drink it. He would have to wait for Potter to spill whatever it was he was here for before Severus decided if the occasion warranted smashing it against Potter's head. 

He doubted it, but that tendril of hope nimbly snaked around Severus' thoughts and kept them focussed.

When it finally dawned on Potter that Severus did not intend to talk first, he gave a half-hearted sigh and soldiered on.

'Allegedly, one of the Aurors is having a Dark Magic infestation at their place of residence, and we would be very grateful if you helped investigate before the situation escalates to lethal risks. It has already impacted MLE functionality, since no one in our forces has been able to contain the incident.'

One scathing remark after another formed itself in Severus' mind, only to become dated and irrelevant with the further progression of his thoughts. And so, after discarding a dozen perfectly good insults, he contented himself with voicing the final conclusion:

' _You_ have Dark Magic in your home that neither you nor your insipid Ministry staff can deal with, and so you decide to come _here_ believing that your brief and terminated association with Daphne will be enough to make me care at least a tiny bit about your well-being?'

Potter's gaze turned sly and calculating. Oh, well, of course he believed that. Daphne had probably suggested it herself, the insufferable woman. They had grown close in the past years as Scorpius' godparents; she was the kind of intelligent, spirited, rational woman who would not waste much of her time on the likes of Potter, and Severus liked her immensely. It would probably make her sad if the father of her child fell victim to a poltergeist. Even if he vastly deserved it for the various kinds of idiocy he manifested.

Waving off Potter's emergent retort, Severus turned to the door and picked up his cloak along the way.

*

The nearest safe Apparition spot was luckily not that far off. Severus would have gone right from his home on his own, but the new Safe Corporeal Transposition regulations were being enforced quite diligently, and he did not want to attempt a transgression should Potter dare give him a lecture. That would have been unbearable. And so they made their way through Knockturn into Diagon.

Potter belligerently paddled half a step ahead of Severus, their heels clacking on the greasy, mud-caked cobblestones. Severus' wand lay stiff against his thigh, its pressing weight an unavoidable presence, like a lifeless snake. Apparently, it was as overjoyed about helping Potter as was Severus. 

The walk was interminable: the street seemed to stretch itself to the breaking point just to be contrary. Severus could swear the lampposts stood further apart than usual, and kept their dead gaslight eyes averted lest he accuse them of treachery. The common daytime din of Diagon maintained a steady assault on Severus' senses as the two of them made their way through the crowd. 

Severus kept his twitching fingers from curling into fists, instead shaking off the nervous energy by lightly tapping a rhythm against his own shins. Devoid of meaning on its own, the haphazard taps grew strong with the force of their purpose, which was to prevent Severus' impending strangulation of Potter: a probability that Potter himself courted into becoming a certainty with his heavy, annoying gait, with carelessness exuding from his every pore, with his unkempt look that, to Severus' trained eye, spoke of banal negligence, not spirited defiance. Potter was not a man in whose company Severus wished to find himself. And he meant _Potter_ , not the embodiment of past grudges he had seen when the man had been a boy. This person in front of him was unpleasant and annoying, and it just happened that it was Potter. How refreshing to despise him for his own sake.

What Daphne had seen in him, Severus could not imagine. It was clear to anyone that her younger sister had far better taste. Draco, for all the limitations imposed on his common sense and determination by his upbringing, and the taint of extreme foolishness and bigotry upon his reputation, had actually managed to make himself useful and presentable. His success at Magical Law came from genuine skill and could inspire nothing but respect; his partnership with Hermione Granger, even more so.

Whereas Potter ran around the country subduing rabid teakettles and the like. And, given the current situation, apparently even this was too taxing for his abilities.

Reaching the designated Apparition spot, thankfully not too crowded, Potter gave Severus a sidelong glance and stepped onto the brightly chalked pavement, dragging Severus along with a disturbing lack of ceremony. He would have objected, and loudly, but Potter was already tightening his grip on Severus' wrist and the lurch of Side-Along Apparition spat Severus straight onto the dusty pavement in front of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place.

***

**In the Grim, Old Place**

Harry had feared that any conversation that he and Severus Snape might have had would have hardly been in good taste, and so he resorted to impersonal civility, wrapping it around himself tighter than a cloak on a November day. Though it was terribly unpleasant to admit that he needed Snape's help, when all the knowledge of classical family jinxes that Daphne possessed was exhausted and all the expertise of his colleagues and subordinates crashed against the impenetrability of the riddle like waves against the shore, he had to own up that only a person with great in-depth understanding of such things could be of any assistance.

And since he was not letting Lucius Malfoy anywhere near his home, not that he would have come if Harry had asked, that left one viable candidate knowledgeable in all kinds of the Dark Arts and Defence: Severus Snape. Inwardly, Harry cringed and wondered if the man was flattered. He had been craving the position of the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher for an awfully long while; maybe the recognition of his skills was in some way appealing? It certainly did not appear so, for from the moment Snape laid eyes on him he looked as he had swallowed a lemon. The expression, combined with the embers of anger in his eyes and the slightly shaggy ponytail that kept his grey-streaked hair off his face, made him look like a retired Muggle rocker forced to leave his den for an unplanned performance. In a way, Harry supposed, it was close to the truth.

Opening the front door, Harry led the way inside the house, the hall considerably more singed than it had been twenty-four hours prior. After the staircase had finished spitting fire this morning (no thanks to the five other Aurors that Harry had to call in, humiliated and confused – they hadn't been able to understand this mess, either), it looked as if he had decided to make a Beltane bonfire right in the house. The high ceilings now had complicated soot patterns on them, one spot in particular resembling a herd of dancing Mooncalves. Most of the portraits had abandoned the frames; even the sheep were now temporarily occupying the medieval mountain path tableau in one of the guest bedrooms. The wholesomeness of the place was broken; mismatched and strange as it was, it had felt like home to Harry. Now, though, it was ominously silent, a thick, sticky kind of quiet slowly sluicing down all the dirty, dusty surfaces in the hall like a horrible taunt. The moment Harry stepped out, or thought of something else than the queer goings-on of the staircase, it emitted an indignant screech. As a result, he hardly thought of anything else. Stepping on it, or even touching the side panels, was still inadvisable: while sundry others were swiftly repelled or simply thrashed about (or, on occasion, ignored), Harry had to endure a whole circus of being stuck, shaken, stomped on, dragged down and spat out with extreme malice, and he was complete unable to counter it. The haunting seemed quite personal in this respect.

Turning around to face Snape, Harry gestured unnecessarily at the staircase. 

Snape had hung up his cloak and was toying with the buttons of his robes. The silence felt even denser now, the full extent of the inadequacy of Harry's efforts on display. Asking Snape for help made him miserable; however, risking that the whole house might disintegrate or drag Harry towards his death somewhere in the splinters seemed impractical and immature. Harry could admit that at times, he was both these things, but a dreadful and possibly carnivorous infestation of mindless malevolence hardly seemed worth demonstrating a stiff upper lip.

As Harry was haltingly accounting for the previous developments, including the time when he tried a series of charms to put the stairs back together and ended up spinning like a top five feet in the air, Snape circled the largest pile of rubble, Banishing it with a flick of his wand. He then stood in front of the stairs and tapped the lowest lopsided step with the tip of his boot. The staircase gave a pleased shudder. Rather than spring upon Snape with its rails sharpened like swords, as it had done scant hours ago to Harry and Auror Clearwater, it hummed like a living mechanism, popping the missing stairs back into existence with a soft clacking sound. Approaching, and not caring much that he was gaping like a fish, Harry watched the construction alternately stretch and tighten, putting itself back together like an insensate but intelligent creature, until its countenance appeared prim and solid enough to let Snape walk halfway up and demonstrate an ability for moderately high jumping on the spot.

'Does it like you or something?' Harry had meant to wonder silently, but ended up speaking with far more shocked disbelief than could be considered appropriate. He suspected his face grew comically distorted when Snape turned to him once again: Snape's eyes did what could only be described as _twinkle_ , in a manner that could have rivalled Dumbledore's. It was positively disturbing.

Snape proceeded to Conjure a new railing instead of the angry spikes that had taken its place.

'Funny that it should manifest so intensely. Must have stewed for all these years, so it's a bit too steep.'

Harry had an inkling of suspicion that they were not speaking of stew or tea. He ventured to step on the first step, but was promptly shooed off by Snape.

'I suppose I should, ah,' here Snape gave a weird chortle, halfway between an oink and an actual laugh, 'apologise. This was not meant for you, Mr Potter. Really, I had forgotten all about it --'

'So this is your jinx?' Harry cried out, incredulous.

'Just a little joke.' Snape's mouth stretched into a smile, genuine and not unhandsome despite the colour of his crooked teeth. 'From the days of the Order of the Phoenix. You see,' Snape was doing away with the soot by means of some complicated incantation that Harry had never heard of, and the soot disappeared instead of stubbornly clinging tighter and forming curious shapes, as it had done when Harry tried the same, 'you see, Mr Black was in the mood for a practical joke one time. I imagine spirits had something to do with that. I --' Snape sat down on the steps and pocketed his wand, '-- was not feeling charitable. So I set up a little spark of my own, to compensate for my burnt garments. It failed to activate then. Obviously. With so many magicks in this house at that time, it is quite understandable. I supposed it was disturbed during one of your renovations. And festered.'

'I was nearly eaten by your prank?'

'Eaten! What nonsense! Well, maybe not. It was just a Beltane bonfire that wouldn't go down unless Mr Black apologised. What you experienced is a wonderful mutation --' at Harry's disbelieving stare, Snape looked positively joyful, '-- yes, a _wonderful_ mutation of the spell over time. Quite ingenuous. It managed to survive and adapt to the changed environment. Not much fire, I'm afraid, but it did get Beltane right, and in the absence of Sirius Black, you are the closest target. It is peculiar that it has dissipated so quickly. I did not foresee an automatic failsafe should I appear...'

'I suppose my calling you for help was considered apology enough. I recognised your...' Harry sought the right word. Knowledge? Expertise? Dignity? Readiness to do the right thing, even if it wasn't with or for people you liked? 'Everything,' he said, as ineloquently as he had expressed his support for awarding Snape his Order of Merlin, First Class, many years ago.

'Yes, I supposed there is that.' Snape kept smiling, as if the whole situation was terribly amusing. Well, he wasn't targeted by the sinister side of the spell, so for him this short trip was probably a nice mix of nostalgia and ego-boosting. There was some colour in his cheeks. Portrait Narcissa appeared in a still life next to him, mumbling something about being juvenile that was too quiet for Harry to hear.

The house was not trying to kill him any more than usual. This happy thought grew until it pushed all others from Harry's mind, and, eyeing the hall that had recovered most of its usual appearance, Harry found himself in an excellent mood. He hardly noticed offering Snape a cup of tea, and missed Snape's surprise and cautiousness when agreeing entirely. Indeed, he began paying attention to his surroundings only a quarter of an hour later, when they were sipping tea in the sitting-room and Snape Banished an overflowing ashtray from the table.

There was no reason they shouldn't talk like two adults, and Harry did everything in his power to make sure that they did. In fact, sticking to neutral but not too asinine topics, such as Apparition legislation and Beltane lore, they managed to communicate like any two polite strangers would. And since the whole thing obviously made Snape uncomfortable and grated on his nerves, Harry resolved then and there to maintain their acquaintance and push it to the point of cool friendship that Snape would consider unseemly to refuse even if it vexed him. 

It was really a most marvellous challenge to take on in one's spare time.


End file.
